My kids love Saturday morning on Cartoon Network! At 9 a.m., they stop showing the new crap (they hate this stuff too) and show two hours of classic Looney Tunes and an ahour of classic Tom and Jerry.
With the exception of Pokemon (which is really irritating to me), there are few modern cartoons that my kids will watch, even they recognize the classics as such.
That must explain the recent Star Wars movies... but wait, in those movies the CG characters _are_ lifelike... it's the human actors who look like zombies.
I think the best mod they could make is to allow you to mod up replies to your posts. Many times when someone replies to me, I see some really good post with a Score of 0, and I wish I could mod it up because it's as good as the score 2+ post it was replying to.
I'm sure there would be some way to abuse this, but I think it would be really helpful.
We on/. regularly vent our spleens (including me, and I'm a Microsoft user myself) about this blatantly bad situation, but Microsoft continues to prevail, and except for the occasional story, there really seems to be no negative impact on their business (much of which seems to be spinning their abysmal record in "trustworthiness").
Hackers are only an endangered species because it hardly takes a hacker to break MS code these days.
Why should Microsoft be "taken to the cleaners", when their EULA's state that any similarity between the software the sell and what they claim they are selling is purely coincidental.
See Microsoft has this liability thing all sewn up. All they have to do is "Just trust us." and then in the fine print it says "But if we screw up, you can't hold us responsible."
They want it both ways, and they seem to have gotten it.
There are hundreds of thousands of people on slashdot who are either in the software/hardware industry, working towards being in the software or hardware industry, or have a real interest in what happens. Now, I would guess that few of us are that influential, but some are. Do you think for a minute that Microsoft can "take over the world" as thoroughly as you describe?
I bet they will try, but I also bet that there will be effective people who will try to prevent Microsoft from accomplishing this task. Let Microsoft develop whatever they want, but within or without the system, they won't ultimately succeed in this ubermonopoly, whether it is by developing better Free products, or even, in the extreme case, by going underground and undermining the system.
Geez, this sounds like a line from a bad hacker movie.
I want to try it, but as one of those unemployed software guys, I can't go around buying computer just to listen to "Funkytown".
I do have an old Performa that a friend gave me, but it runs version 9 of the OS and I'm not about to blow money on OSX because I don't really have any other reason to use it.
I'm not busting on Apple. I really hope they succeed at this, because it sounds like what we all have been hoping for for years. I'm just afraid that this will turn out to be too good to be true in the long run.
You're not the target audience. The target audience is the one that doesn't care that alternate OS's can't be run or don't even understand what an OS is. And believe me, there are still a lot of people out there like this.
The product could fill this niche nicely and I suspect that there will always be a market for those of us who want full control over the hardware... they may just get a little harder to find.
You've got a point, but at this point I have to wonder if the service itself will generate more revenue than any potential hardware sales.
This service may sell iPods, but I don't see it selling computers, so IMO they are selling themselves short. Of course, if the labels stipulated this delay then that's another matter.
That makes sense. I wonder though, how Apple managed to convince the labels to go with the looser implementation rather than whatever draconian measures Microsoft will offer them.
Sounds like a win-win scenario, but I still think MS will monkey up the works.
IANAMBA but I expect Microsoft will be able to throw a lot of money at this problem and come out ahead. I'm rooting for Apple this time, but I'm not too sanguine... yet.
Apple has this new product that seems to totally rock (literally and figuratively), except they won't have a Windows version till "late 2003". I wish I could try it.
Is it just me, or could Apple just hire a couple of half-decent Windows developers and have this ported in just a little less time (like weeks)? Of course, how many years did it take them to get QuickTime to work right (or roght-ish) on Windows?
That's plenty of time for Microsoft to roll out a half-assed product in 3 months with much stricter DRM features and completely destroy Apple because they instantly have 20 times as many potential customers.
Apple will once again have the superior product and single digit market share, whereas if iTunes were available today, they would get the jump on Microsoft (and others) and actually have a chance to do something successfully. People are dying for this product and if Microsoft rolls out something that is at least tolerable, if inferior, tomorrow, iTunes will never make it on Windows, where all the customers are! We're not talking about the Linux crowd, which is important but still relatively small, we're talking about 95% of computer users in the world!
Can they really be risking their whole business plan for lack of a few decent Windows people? Or am I missing something?
In the days when IBM was suggesting there was a world market for 5 computers, every piece of software was vitally important and had to be perfect because the machines it was running on were rare and time was expensive.
Even in the 1970's this was still true.
Nowadays however, we have computers in almost every electronic device and PCs are a commodity. We live in the age of shovelware, where you can find software in cereal boxes instead of decoder rings or whistles that allow you to defeat the phone system.
In other words, we are drowning in software, and most of it is bad. Really bad. Cookie cutter stuff that often barely works (if at all), and is just as often difficult or impossible to use even if it does work.
We live in a world where the biggest, most successful software company has an abysmal track record of shoddy software and disinterest in customer satisfaction.
So, since the software industry is pumping out huge volumes of half-chewed cardboard, those of us who can produce filet mignon (or even a decent slice of bread) are finding ourselves less in demand. After all, why pay for a gourmet chef when all you really need is a burger flipper. After all, didn't we just leave an era where anyone who could read "Teach Yourself HTML in 21 Days" could write his own ticket?
That said, there will always be a need for serious software developers as long as we have computer, it's just that with the advent of more and more shovelware, crappy Web UIs, software work outsourced overseas and endless Microsoft service packs, the demand for these high-ticket employees will become smaller and smaller in proportion to the whole industry.
It's just like a startup... if your company has 4 people, they all have to be top-notch die-hard dedicated employees, but when it has 10000, it's inevitable that a large fraction will be dead-weight.
But, apparently they can. They can take over bodies of humans in the matrix, they can make Neo's mouth disappear, they can create things like the "bug", which clearly can't exist in the "real world".
If you think too hard about what the agents can and cannot do, you will only get a headache. The only conclusion you can draw is that they have somewhat above normal control of "reality", which just got trumped by Neo. I guess the only solution will be to completely outnumber him....;-)
Something very original, not your typical clever, good looking, young lawyer that beats the big bad guy.
Right, it was a typical clever, good-looking young hacker that beats the big bad guy.
Yep, never seen that before.
Not meaning to bust on you, because The Matrix is one of my favorite movies ever, but the plot was hardly original (ever see Tron?). Almost every movie Hollywood makes is about the lone outcast or outcasts trying to bring down a corrupt system. Hell, they even completely recast the setting of Star Trek to get the movies to fit that formula. That is why I preferred "Insurrection" to "First Contact", it was much truer to the TV show in style, content and characterization. "First Contact" would have been much better as the same story in a non Star Trek setting, IMO.
By the way, the Buddhist aspect of the movie was very cool, but not subtle at all, especially when you see the kid who dressed very much like a Buddhist monk. I'm a Christian and I didn't really see any Christian metaphors in the movie (other than the blatantly obvious resurrected hero, who becomes more powerful (or influential) than ever after he "rises from the dead", but that symbol is very cliche... it needs a little more to be a real metaphor, IMO).
There was a recent remake with George Clooney, which apparently was a real snoozer, in part because the sf element of the story was apparently glossed over.
Actually, I have to disagree with just about everything you said.
1. With the advent of stars like Jackie Chan and Chow Yun-Fat and Jet Li into popular American media, the Hong-Kong style martial arts movies are as popular as ever.
2. A story targeted towards computer geeks, sf fans, and people who appreciate state-of-the-art sfx (how fast that's changed) would have a certain proportion of the potential audience sewn up.
The movie was good, but... the dialog sucked. Keanu Reeve is a pretty awful actor, but he was very convincing with the demanding action required by the movie. Having said that, I like many of the pictures he's been in and I like him despite those down sides. The plot was cool, but hardly unique or original, and if you thought about it too much it had holes you could drive a truck through. However, they weren't so bad as to detract from the enjoyment, unless you're one of those types who worries about the combination of Captain Kirk's safe in his quarters.
I would argue it did have a ready-made fan base, but as is appropriate, the 2nd and 3rd movies will have a much bigger one.
You are right though, about the problem with people reading too much into movies. I've seen sad attempts to explain all the little details and inconsistencies of movies like this, and those attempts just come across as pathetic. Movie writers and makers are rarely adept science-fiction authors, and vice-versa. If you can't deal with that then stick to books. But like you, I can enjoy a movie like this.
...and I have to agree that System Shock 2 was one of the best games I've ever played. System Shock was the first Doom-like game that I actually thought was a good game and SS2 took the same idea, told an interesting sequel to the story and updated the technology. Like any good game, the fact that the technology is a few years old doesn't matter, there's an interesting story, creepy environment, lots of action, and good RPG elements.
I'll check out the Star Trek game, but I bet I won't like it as much as SS2.
It will come in several different pleasing colors, but the toilet will have no handle, you will need to flush by clicking on the toilet icon. Setup will be a breeze, but if the software fails, you will see a big poo icon and a cryptic error code.
Alas, I couldn't use it, because I have an incompatible Microsoft ass: big, bloated and full of s--t.
I would guess that it's a matter of scale. If McGee is making a game that will sell for $40 a pop and he sells thousands of copies then he is making some real scratch off of the character. Pernny Arcade is using the character once in a single comic strip which is fairly obscure at that. Technically, they might make money off of that strip, but its orders of magnitude different (if it isn't I want to get into cartooning!).
I can see where American Greetings might has a case if there was reason to believe that this cartoon could be confused with the real Strawberry Shortcake product. Possibly a 3-year-old might make that mistake, but no one else would. If there were a game, I would think that that would be much less likely, particularly if someone was purchasing based on the title. I wouldn't care to guess where a line of demarcation might be placed, but clearly the comic strip and the hypothetic game, were it real would be categorically different. McGee would be infringing on the product but I don't think Penny Arcade is.
Besides, even though I said differently, McGee's products really couldn't be called parodies, but since he is using characters and settings in the public domain there isn't a problem (other than tastelessness, but lets face, is there an id alum who isn't the zenith of tastelessness? I would still believe that PA is not guilty of violating AG rights, but then again, AG can buy lots of extra rights with all that cash.
If you want to get technical, perhaps you could say it's a "metaparody" of Strawberry Shortcake. The parody is that American McGee would parody (and let's face, that's all his stuff is, albeit a tedious and unfunny parody) Strawberry Shortcake.
I think I'll write a strip about Penny Arcade making a strip about an American MsGee parody of Disney characters and getting into legal trouble. The possibilities are endless. Is metametaparody legal?
I found the original strip to be amusing, if tasteless. The new strip was just a juvenile temper tantrum. They can do better.
Yes, and when all the stupid security flaws in Windows 2003 come to light, Microsoft will be ready with Windows 2005, ad infinitum.
If Microsoft cared about anything other than selling you the next version, they would make it much easier for admins and end-users (especially end-users) to properly lock down their machines. The problem is that most of Microsoft's so-called useful functionality and "innovation" is what causes these security problems in the first place. Oh that and the Computer Science 101-level mistake of not checking your freakin' memcpy( )'s to make sure they're not overrunning buffers.
Sure, 2003 is better, but there is no reason in the world why XP, and 2000, and NT4, etc, couldn't have been better too, seeing as how Microsoft is largely playing catchup with problems that have been solved for years on the Linux/Unix side of things.
For all their vaunted wealth and so-called expertise, Microsoft comes off as an incredibly amateur operation at times... and this is coming from someone with 15 years of experience developing under MS OS's and tools.
If a disorganized bunch of random hackers can put together an operating system and tools that can rival a $500 billion dollar company, that says as much for the quality of talent at that company as it does for the brilliance of those hackers.
I'm not flaming you for being pro-Micorosoft or commenting that they did something right... they do do some things right, but it's obvious if they gave half a damn about anything other than maintaining their government-sanctioned monopoly, they would and could do a lot more things right.
As any good scientist will tell you, correlation does not imply causation, but everything Microsoft does can be explained by the above paragraph, so eventually you have to think there's something to it.
First off, anyone who thinks breaking up MS would have been a solution to anything is sadly mistaken. Microsoft's biggest problem, from a quality point-of-view is that they _can't_ operate like one big company. Even going back to the original Windows SDK, it's blatantly obvious that part of Microsoft couldn't or wouldn't communicate with each other and I would go so far as to suggest that different parts of the company are actually in competition with each other, which is why MS products are so inconsistent, particularly at the API level. Of course, it doesn't help that half their software was bought from other companies, so there is no unified strategy for software development and no standards that will actually help someone other than Microsoft itself.
Slashdot Mirror
I thought I was getting technology from 2 millenia in the future! Those lying bastards!
What about Mystery Science Theater 3000, or even worse, the Gruntmaster 9000?! What about Warhammer 40000?!?!?!!!
It's worse than you can imagine!
My kids love Saturday morning on Cartoon Network! At 9 a.m., they stop showing the new crap (they hate this stuff too) and show two hours of classic Looney Tunes and an ahour of classic Tom and Jerry.
With the exception of Pokemon (which is really irritating to me), there are few modern cartoons that my kids will watch, even they recognize the classics as such.
That must explain the recent Star Wars movies... but wait, in those movies the CG characters _are_ lifelike... it's the human actors who look like zombies.
I think the best mod they could make is to allow you to mod up replies to your posts. Many times when someone replies to me, I see some really good post with a Score of 0, and I wish I could mod it up because it's as good as the score 2+ post it was replying to.
I'm sure there would be some way to abuse this, but I think it would be really helpful.
That's not funny, that's the scariest thing I've ever heard. How will you navigate a lot of sites without hacking URL's?
Oh, well, I use Phoenix anyway.
But where's the public outrage?
/. regularly vent our spleens (including me, and I'm a Microsoft user myself) about this blatantly bad situation, but Microsoft continues to prevail, and except for the occasional story, there really seems to be no negative impact on their business (much of which seems to be spinning their abysmal record in "trustworthiness").
We on
Hackers are only an endangered species because it hardly takes a hacker to break MS code these days.
Why should Microsoft be "taken to the cleaners", when their EULA's state that any similarity between the software the sell and what they claim they are selling is purely coincidental.
See Microsoft has this liability thing all sewn up. All they have to do is "Just trust us." and then in the fine print it says "But if we screw up, you can't hold us responsible."
They want it both ways, and they seem to have gotten it.
There are hundreds of thousands of people on slashdot who are either in the software/hardware industry, working towards being in the software or hardware industry, or have a real interest in what happens. Now, I would guess that few of us are that influential, but some are. Do you think for a minute that Microsoft can "take over the world" as thoroughly as you describe?
I bet they will try, but I also bet that there will be effective people who will try to prevent Microsoft from accomplishing this task. Let Microsoft develop whatever they want, but within or without the system, they won't ultimately succeed in this ubermonopoly, whether it is by developing better Free products, or even, in the extreme case, by going underground and undermining the system.
Geez, this sounds like a line from a bad hacker movie.
Yeah, but people who own Macs but not iPods might buy an iPod. As a Windows user, I'm outta luck for now.
I hope Apple succeeds because they have a better product. I hope Microsoft doesn't succeed because they can throw lots of money around.
(i.e., If Microsoft _does_ make a better product, then they should win, but after seeing Microsoft's emphasis on onerous DRM.)
I would gladly buy from Apple, because I can do what I want with the product (keep it on my computer and burn CD's I can use in any player).
I want to try it, but as one of those unemployed software guys, I can't go around buying computer just to listen to "Funkytown".
I do have an old Performa that a friend gave me, but it runs version 9 of the OS and I'm not about to blow money on OSX because I don't really have any other reason to use it.
I'm not busting on Apple. I really hope they succeed at this, because it sounds like what we all have been hoping for for years. I'm just afraid that this will turn out to be too good to be true in the long run.
You're not the target audience. The target audience is the one that doesn't care that alternate OS's can't be run or don't even understand what an OS is. And believe me, there are still a lot of people out there like this.
The product could fill this niche nicely and I suspect that there will always be a market for those of us who want full control over the hardware... they may just get a little harder to find.
You've got a point, but at this point I have to wonder if the service itself will generate more revenue than any potential hardware sales.
This service may sell iPods, but I don't see it selling computers, so IMO they are selling themselves short. Of course, if the labels stipulated this delay then that's another matter.
That makes sense. I wonder though, how Apple managed to convince the labels to go with the looser implementation rather than whatever draconian measures Microsoft will offer them.
Sounds like a win-win scenario, but I still think MS will monkey up the works.
Has Apple ever surprised you?
Not recently.
IANAMBA but I expect Microsoft will be able to throw a lot of money at this problem and come out ahead. I'm rooting for Apple this time, but I'm not too sanguine... yet.
Time will tell.
Apple has this new product that seems to totally rock (literally and figuratively), except they won't have a Windows version till "late 2003". I wish I could try it.
Is it just me, or could Apple just hire a couple of half-decent Windows developers and have this ported in just a little less time (like weeks)? Of course, how many years did it take them to get QuickTime to work right (or roght-ish) on Windows?
That's plenty of time for Microsoft to roll out a half-assed product in 3 months with much stricter DRM features and completely destroy Apple because they instantly have 20 times as many potential customers.
Apple will once again have the superior product and single digit market share, whereas if iTunes were available today, they would get the jump on Microsoft (and others) and actually have a chance to do something successfully. People are dying for this product and if Microsoft rolls out something that is at least tolerable, if inferior, tomorrow, iTunes will never make it on Windows, where all the customers are! We're not talking about the Linux crowd, which is important but still relatively small, we're talking about 95% of computer users in the world!
Can they really be risking their whole business plan for lack of a few decent Windows people? Or am I missing something?
In the days when IBM was suggesting there was a world market for 5 computers, every piece of software was vitally important and had to be perfect because the machines it was running on were rare and time was expensive.
Even in the 1970's this was still true.
Nowadays however, we have computers in almost every electronic device and PCs are a commodity. We live in the age of shovelware, where you can find software in cereal boxes instead of decoder rings or whistles that allow you to defeat the phone system.
In other words, we are drowning in software, and most of it is bad. Really bad. Cookie cutter stuff that often barely works (if at all), and is just as often difficult or impossible to use even if it does work.
We live in a world where the biggest, most successful software company has an abysmal track record of shoddy software and disinterest in customer satisfaction.
So, since the software industry is pumping out huge volumes of half-chewed cardboard, those of us who can produce filet mignon (or even a decent slice of bread) are finding ourselves less in demand. After all, why pay for a gourmet chef when all you really need is a burger flipper. After all, didn't we just leave an era where anyone who could read "Teach Yourself HTML in 21 Days" could write his own ticket?
That said, there will always be a need for serious software developers as long as we have computer, it's just that with the advent of more and more shovelware, crappy Web UIs, software work outsourced overseas and endless Microsoft service packs, the demand for these high-ticket employees will become smaller and smaller in proportion to the whole industry.
It's just like a startup... if your company has 4 people, they all have to be top-notch die-hard dedicated employees, but when it has 10000, it's inevitable that a large fraction will be dead-weight.
But, apparently they can. They can take over bodies of humans in the matrix, they can make Neo's mouth disappear, they can create things like the "bug", which clearly can't exist in the "real world".
;-)
If you think too hard about what the agents can and cannot do, you will only get a headache. The only conclusion you can draw is that they have somewhat above normal control of "reality", which just got trumped by Neo. I guess the only solution will be to completely outnumber him....
Something very original, not your typical clever, good looking, young lawyer that beats the big bad guy.
Right, it was a typical clever, good-looking young hacker that beats the big bad guy.
Yep, never seen that before.
Not meaning to bust on you, because The Matrix is one of my favorite movies ever, but the plot was hardly original (ever see Tron?). Almost every movie Hollywood makes is about the lone outcast or outcasts trying to bring down a corrupt system. Hell, they even completely recast the setting of Star Trek to get the movies to fit that formula. That is why I preferred "Insurrection" to "First Contact", it was much truer to the TV show in style, content and characterization. "First Contact" would have been much better as the same story in a non Star Trek setting, IMO.
By the way, the Buddhist aspect of the movie was very cool, but not subtle at all, especially when you see the kid who dressed very much like a Buddhist monk. I'm a Christian and I didn't really see any Christian metaphors in the movie (other than the blatantly obvious resurrected hero, who becomes more powerful (or influential) than ever after he "rises from the dead", but that symbol is very cliche... it needs a little more to be a real metaphor, IMO).
There was a recent remake with George Clooney, which apparently was a real snoozer, in part because the sf element of the story was apparently glossed over.
Actually, I have to disagree with just about everything you said.
1. With the advent of stars like Jackie Chan and Chow Yun-Fat and Jet Li into popular American media, the Hong-Kong style martial arts movies are as popular as ever.
2. A story targeted towards computer geeks, sf fans, and people who appreciate state-of-the-art sfx (how fast that's changed) would have a certain proportion of the potential audience sewn up.
The movie was good, but... the dialog sucked. Keanu Reeve is a pretty awful actor, but he was very convincing with the demanding action required by the movie. Having said that, I like many of the pictures he's been in and I like him despite those down sides. The plot was cool, but hardly unique or original, and if you thought about it too much it had holes you could drive a truck through. However, they weren't so bad as to detract from the enjoyment, unless you're one of those types who worries about the combination of Captain Kirk's safe in his quarters.
I would argue it did have a ready-made fan base, but as is appropriate, the 2nd and 3rd movies will have a much bigger one.
You are right though, about the problem with people reading too much into movies. I've seen sad attempts to explain all the little details and inconsistencies of movies like this, and those attempts just come across as pathetic. Movie writers and makers are rarely adept science-fiction authors, and vice-versa. If you can't deal with that then stick to books. But like you, I can enjoy a movie like this.
...and I have to agree that System Shock 2 was one of the best games I've ever played. System Shock was the first Doom-like game that I actually thought was a good game and SS2 took the same idea, told an interesting sequel to the story and updated the technology. Like any good game, the fact that the technology is a few years old doesn't matter, there's an interesting story, creepy environment, lots of action, and good RPG elements.
I'll check out the Star Trek game, but I bet I won't like it as much as SS2.
... iCrapper.
It will come in several different pleasing colors, but the toilet will have no handle, you will need to flush by clicking on the toilet icon. Setup will be a breeze, but if the software fails, you will see a big poo icon and a cryptic error code.
Alas, I couldn't use it, because I have an incompatible Microsoft ass: big, bloated and full of s--t.
I would guess that it's a matter of scale. If McGee is making a game that will sell for $40 a pop and he sells thousands of copies then he is making some real scratch off of the character. Pernny Arcade is using the character once in a single comic strip which is fairly obscure at that. Technically, they might make money off of that strip, but its orders of magnitude different (if it isn't I want to get into cartooning!).
I can see where American Greetings might has a case if there was reason to believe that this cartoon could be confused with the real Strawberry Shortcake product. Possibly a 3-year-old might make that mistake, but no one else would. If there were a game, I would think that that would be much less likely, particularly if someone was purchasing based on the title. I wouldn't care to guess where a line of demarcation might be placed, but clearly the comic strip and the hypothetic game, were it real would be categorically different. McGee would be infringing on the product but I don't think Penny Arcade is.
Besides, even though I said differently, McGee's products really couldn't be called parodies, but since he is using characters and settings in the public domain there isn't a problem (other than tastelessness, but lets face, is there an id alum who isn't the zenith of tastelessness? I would still believe that PA is not guilty of violating AG rights, but then again, AG can buy lots of extra rights with all that cash.
If you want to get technical, perhaps you could say it's a "metaparody" of Strawberry Shortcake. The parody is that American McGee would parody (and let's face, that's all his stuff is, albeit a tedious and unfunny parody) Strawberry Shortcake.
I think I'll write a strip about Penny Arcade making a strip about an American MsGee parody of Disney characters and getting into legal trouble. The possibilities are endless. Is metametaparody legal?
I found the original strip to be amusing, if tasteless. The new strip was just a juvenile temper tantrum. They can do better.
Yes, and when all the stupid security flaws in Windows 2003 come to light, Microsoft will be ready with Windows 2005, ad infinitum.
If Microsoft cared about anything other than selling you the next version, they would make it much easier for admins and end-users (especially end-users) to properly lock down their machines. The problem is that most of Microsoft's so-called useful functionality and "innovation" is what causes these security problems in the first place. Oh that and the Computer Science 101-level mistake of not checking your freakin' memcpy( )'s to make sure they're not overrunning buffers.
Sure, 2003 is better, but there is no reason in the world why XP, and 2000, and NT4, etc, couldn't have been better too, seeing as how Microsoft is largely playing catchup with problems that have been solved for years on the Linux/Unix side of things.
For all their vaunted wealth and so-called expertise, Microsoft comes off as an incredibly amateur operation at times... and this is coming from someone with 15 years of experience developing under MS OS's and tools.
If a disorganized bunch of random hackers can put together an operating system and tools that can rival a $500 billion dollar company, that says as much for the quality of talent at that company as it does for the brilliance of those hackers.
I'm not flaming you for being pro-Micorosoft or commenting that they did something right... they do do some things right, but it's obvious if they gave half a damn about anything other than maintaining their government-sanctioned monopoly, they would and could do a lot more things right.
As any good scientist will tell you, correlation does not imply causation, but everything Microsoft does can be explained by the above paragraph, so eventually you have to think there's something to it.
First off, anyone who thinks breaking up MS would have been a solution to anything is sadly mistaken. Microsoft's biggest problem, from a quality point-of-view is that they _can't_ operate like one big company. Even going back to the original Windows SDK, it's blatantly obvious that part of Microsoft couldn't or wouldn't communicate with each other and I would go so far as to suggest that different parts of the company are actually in competition with each other, which is why MS products are so inconsistent, particularly at the API level. Of course, it doesn't help that half their software was bought from other companies, so there is no unified strategy for software development and no standards that will actually help someone other than Microsoft itself.